Saturday, January 25, 2014

Not My Forte

Trolling is an interesting thing to me. You're trying to trick someone into believing something inflammatory in the hopes that you can get a rise out of them. In a way that's unsupportable. It's unkind to manipulate people, although it's hard to escape the feeling that some people having it coming. I guess there are different levels of trolling. I wouldn't do it except at a low level. It would have to be something mild, and I wouldn't want to leave someone with the wrong idea for long.

I don't think I'm very good at trolling. When I try it on Facebook or on Twitter, it gets no reaction. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. I think I may be trying to convince people of something where they wouldn't know the difference either way. I try to find something where I can tweak it until it's just a hair on the wrong side of believability, but maybe I have that calibrated improperly. I like to think that I can deliver it in a straight enough way that I'm not tipping my hand, but I must just be picking the wrong material.

Other people I know are much better at it. One in particular does certain things that may signal just what I'm doing wrong. The big thing is the target. The only people I've made any effort to troll are my own friends. I think they may be too smart and too aware of my personality to be fooled for a moment, whatever they do. He picks strangers on what you might call the lunatic fringe of the internet. I was delighted when he got people to bite by claiming that he's read how we should treat the ocean as our personal toilet. Well-meaning but empty-headed environmentalist types really went for that.

I guess he goes the extra mile. At that point there's just too much work in it for me. I suppose I could do it well enough if I were really committed, but having a fondness for a certain style and having an aptitude for it are just not the same thing. In the absence of being very naturally good at trolling, I would have to work far too hard at it for it to be worthwhile. At that point, who's the victim? Being out a bunch of hours and getting nothing in return but the knowledge that I've duped some fool, it seems like it's me.

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